


and it becomes

by carloabay



Series: you meant so well [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Flashbacks, M/M, PTSD, brief cameo by clint barton, character study question mark, emotionally unavailable gays, mlm/wlw solidarity, varied use of the fuck word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29140608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: From the middle of Fuck-Nowhere, Norway, to a flower dress in Washington DC.
Relationships: Sharon Carter/Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Series: you meant so well [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138709
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. The Tracksuit Mafia Get In the Way Of The Gays

**Author's Note:**

> Wazzaaaaaa this is a series now enjoy
> 
> also you should almost definitely probably read mistletoe is a weed in preparation for this story otherwise u will be lost

She finds out eventually.

Steve tells her, off-handedly, that his building's tenants are all doing a meeting cook-up, congregating in his neighbour Kate's apartment, to 'get to know each other'. Natasha laughs.

When the shooting's stopped and Natasha is catching her breath, Steve cocks his head at her.

"What?" she pants. "Something on my face?"

"D'you wanna come with?"

Natasha blinks at him. He starts to backtrack, nervously.

"Just- I don't know anyone there, not really friends with-"

"Relax, Rogers," Natasha drawls, charging her Bites. "I'll be your date to the damn cook-up." Steve hesitates. "Friend-date," she amends, with a roll of her eyes.

"Thanks," he says, looking suitably embarrassed. "Oh, heads up." And the conversation ends with a hail of bullets.

∆

Kate, the hostess. 

She plays it well. Too well.

Natasha had thought-- it doesn't matter. They would have been-- doesn't matter.

Natasha sits through the whole evening with Steve vibrating nervous energy by her side.

There's Lucy, pretty dress, pretty curves, pretty smile. Taki and Carlotta, married for ten years. Corbin, thick glasses and a wide smile.

Kate stacks the dirty plates on the kitchen counter, off-the-shoulder flower dress, waves coming down around her collarbones.

Natasha grips her glass like a lifeline.

There's a lot S.H.I.E.L.D doesn't tell you.

Lucy appears at Natasha's elbow, filches a chip from the bowl on the mantle piece, and offers up that pretty smile.

"Hey."

"Hey," Natasha says, drawing on her own grin. It feels done-up, like it's scrawled with permanent marker. Lucy doesn't seem to notice.

"I'm number forty-eight," she says. "How d'you know Steve?"

"Work," Natasha says shortly. She catches herself staring over Lucy's shoulder. "We work together, sometimes."

"That's nice," Lucy says.

"Not bad yourself," Natasha replies, like a reflex. Well. Maybe it's the smile. Maybe it's the eyeliner. Lucy grins.

"I--"

"I'm gonna go help in the kitchen," Natasha blurts, and Lucy blinks suddenly. Before she can get an affirmative, Natasha ducks around Lucy's shoulder and across the room, barely avoiding tripping over the couch. _Smooth_.

"Hey," Kate says, as Natasha rounds the counter. "I think I'm just about done in here--"

"You're good," Natasha says, into her glass. Kate smiles coldly. There's a warning glowing in her gaze.

"Just the crockery to go. If you don't mind drying?"

"Course not," Natasha replies, and she sweeps a drying cloth off a cupboard door handle. The two of them move to the sink, their backs to the living room. Kate's hand brushes Natasha's sleeve.

She has this _urge_ to snatch at Kate's fingers, grip them, warm against her palm.

Natasha reaches for a plate and starts to dry up.

"Just stack them on the side," Kate says, nodding to the right of the draining board. Natasha complies, and a thick silence settles between the two of them.

Kate, up to her elbows in suds and hot water, glances quickly at the guests over one shoulder. Natasha picks up another plate.

"What are you doing here?" Kate mumbles. Her skin is reddening from the water.

"I'm helping you clear up," Natasha says breezily, like she hasn't been lock-kneed and gritting her teeth all evening. Kate waits. "I told you I was stationed at the Triskelion now."

"Yeah, and then you disappeared for a week."

"And you took an undercover op looking after Grandpa America."

"Are you seriously blaming me for this?" Kate hisses. Her jaw works, and then she sighs through her nose, slowly. Calming herself down. "You know I'd be crazy not to take this job."

Natasha sets another plate down quickly. A clash of crockery, and Kate winces.

"Sorry," Natasha says. "I'm sorry." It comes out like Kate's knocked the air from her lungs, like she's winded. Kate checks the guests again.

"That's it? You're sorry?"

"I had a- something happened."

"Uh-huh."

Natasha grinds her fingers into the dishcloth. Her throat is closing up. Figures. Maybe she's allergic to adult conversation.

But she can't say.

"I got into trouble," she says instead, insisting. Kate looks over at her, checking over, or maybe she's probing for a lie.

"I guessed as much," she says, and now her tone is rough, mad, and Natasha doesn't know why.

"Sharon-"

"It's _Kate_ ," Kate snaps, knee-jerk reaction, and Natasha can _see_ her drawing away. "You _disappeared_ , Romanoff. I waited at the airport for five _fucking_ hours. I found your apartment." Something in Natasha twitches, an unconscious reaction that's been built, and she recognises it: she's telling herself to move out. Someone's found her hiding place. She tries to squash it. Kate glares at the soapy water. "You weren't there, obviously. I asked Hill. I asked Sitwell, Hand, those dicks in the reception, I went to fucking _Fury_ and all I got was a block. Every angle."

Kate looks up, running her tongue over her glossy bottom lip, and she looks _angry_. She takes a breath.

"You really are as good as they say," Kate says.

Natasha flinches. Kate looks pained for a second, half a second, one hand gripping the edge of the sink, and then she dumps a wet pile of cutlery on the draining board with a _clang_ , and looks away.

Natasha stares, stares, and a loop of hair falls over Kate's face, iron curtain between them.

She needs to say something. Make this salvageable, bandage up the wounded stoop to Kate's shoulders.

Something like she said in Norway, something--

"It wasn't about you," she says at last.

Kate goes still. Muscles stringing in her forearms.

Natasha can tell, even as soon as the words leave her tongue, that she's fucked it up. Desperately, she wants to take them back, claw them into her mouth and choke them down again, no matter the bloody scratches they leave on her insides.

The damage is done.

"Right," Kate says, dull. "Didn't think so." She steps away from the sink, wrings out the water from her hands, soap splattering the wall. She dries them on a towel, and her skin is still bright from the heat of the water. One more step back. Natasha grips a cup with both hands, scrambling to find something else to say. "The plates go in the left-hand cupboard," Kate mutters, and she backs away into the dining room.

∆

There's two fingers of whiskey poured out on in a plastic cup on her kitchen counter when she gets home.

Natasha dumps her shoes on one side of the hall.

"Clint?" she calls. That whiskey looks good right about now. That whiskey, a box of tissues, and her bed.

The TV is blaring, comical noises. Natasha creeps into the dusky living room. Clint is draped over her couch, eyes half-lidded, watching the cartoons with subtitles on.

She reaches out and tugs loosely on his ear.

"Hey," Clint mumbles, without taking his eyes off the TV. "I figured you were having a long day."

Natasha's eyes sting. Clint turns his head, and his eyelids are purple with sleeplessness.

"That's what the whiskey's for?" she asks. Her throat is thickening. She's not going to cry. Not until she's wrapped in her comforter on the sofa with her head in Clint's armpit, like usual.

"That's what the whiskey's for," Clint agrees.

"Okay," Natasha says. She's fucking exhausted. She's exhausted and she's a little sleepy and she's spent the better part of four hours trying to appease a girl she disappeared on, and Sharon hates her for it.

Natasha wipes her nose on her sleeve, indelicately.

"C'mon," Clint says, turning back to the TV. "It's Futurama reruns next. You can cry on my shirt, I need a reason to throw it out."

It takes Natasha less than ten seconds to tug her comforter over her shoulders, swipe the whiskey off the counter, and shovel herself in beside Clint on the couch.

She's well practiced by now.

"I can put my ears in if you wanna talk about it," Clint says. Natasha looks over, and the bright cartoons are swimming in his eyes.

She doesn't want to talk.

She tossed back the whiskey all in one, and it sears on the way. She coughs it down, gulps some air, and yanks her hair pins out.

Clint nods, picking her bangs away from her face with calloused fingertips.

"Noted."

The TV squeals and screeches and laughs, and Natasha collapses into Clint’s side, crumpling the cup in one hand. Her nails are chipped, from picking at them on the taxi ride home.

Sharon didn’t notice when Natasha left the apartment. No one did, but she’d hoped for an acknowledgement, or even just a look.

Sharon had ignored her. Chatting animatedly with Lucy, flower-dressed Kate with her pretty blonde waves and pink-lacquered fingernails.

Natasha wants to throw up, suddenly. She can’t stop thinking about Norway, biting words almost as cold as the frost, Sharon’s hair in her face, mistletoe and a tired laugh, mouth on her skin—

—somehow that turned into Kate, bare shoulders, preppy smile, a freezing glare beneath an iron curtain, and it’s all so different—

She’s used to shedding her own skin. She’s used to disappointment and disappearance, they’re old friends by now. But they’ve become cloaks and shields, and seeing that in a mirror of another woman, a woman she cares about, is something she can’t do. And that’s her own fault.

She shouldn’t have left the airport.

∆

_There was someone on her tail, the second she stepped off the plane. Broad shoulders. Blue tracksuit. He followed her into the airport cafe, then out again._

_Natasha ducked into the bathroom and changed her clothes, tucked her hair under a hat. Sharon would be landing in two hours. She had time to shake this idiot._

_Natasha left the bathroom and weaved her way through the airport crowds, curving away from the barriers. He was still on her. She made for the waiting area, situated herself right in the middle, bodies blurring on all sides, people shielding her._

_Unless they were desperate, or authorities, for some reason, there wasn’t a chance in a million they’d try anything here. She had time to plan, time for a route and a car and a way out of here._

_Sharon._

_“Shit,” Natasha hissed under her breath, just about managing to look invested in the book on her lap. Sharon— Sharon would have to wait. There was no way she was dragging Sharon into a mysterious crossfire. Natasha stood, and left the airport._

∆

She wants to cry. Real hard, big pathetic sobs.

She _had_ something, she’s sure of it.

Sharon wipes her nose with a tissue and breathes, in, out. She shoves the last of the glasses haphazardly back into the cupboard.

_It wasn’t about you._

“Jesus Christ, Natasha,” Sharon gasps, and her voice is little more than a whisper.

She won’t cry, though.

“Fuck!” Sharon hisses, and she kicks the couch. She’s mad more than she is upset.

She wanted to yell, when Natasha turned up at the door behind Steve Rogers’ shoulder, she wanted to drag her inside and shake her by the shoulders and ask her _what the hell _?__

She smiled instead, and her heart went _help, help, help_ , and she sat through that whole goddamn evening with a fake smile that Peggy would be proud of.

Sharon thinks of Norway, little cold challenges, Natasha curled around her like a cat, Natasha’s grip on her arm, Natasha gently feeding her water, Natasha, Natasha—

__∆_ _

_Sharon waited in the airport until the sun went down and the lights came on, and the planes came and went through the windows. She dug her phone out of her pocket every two minutes, checked her texts, chewed on her lip until it chapped on one side._

_Until—_

_**where are you?** : Read 19:42_

_Sharon stared at the screen._

_Her head worked like crazy for a second: that’s weird, she’s in trouble, she’s not landed, she’s...not waiting?_

_She waited for another half hour._

_She got a taxi home, and paced her tiny apartment wall to wall, and her phone glowed emptily at the ceiling._

_“Carter, I don’t know where Romanoff is,” Fury said the next morning, spreading his hands. “Please, go to your briefing.” He looked tired. Sharon balled her fists in her pockets. Her eyes ached._

“ _Yes, sir,” she said, through closed teeth. She left, and the door shut itself softly behind her._

_”You’re late,” Hill said, without looking up from her tablet, when Sharon slid into the briefing room. It was empty aside from the two of them._

_“Sorry,” Sharon said._

_“This is top secret,” Hill replied, launching straight in. “Completely confidential. Declassified only to myself and Director Fury. Understood?”_

_“Yes,” Sharon said, running her tongue over her ravaged lip. “And the assignment is?”_

_“Protection detail.” Sharon barely held back a sigh. “On Captain America.” Sharon stopped breathing._

_“I’m sorry?” she said, and it came out as a squeak._

_Natasha didn’t call. Didn’t text. Then Sharon left her phone behind, turned off and stuffed into her bottom drawer, and she was given an expensive apartment, a closet full of hospital scrubs, cute dresses, and woollen sweaters, and at least four pairs of Mary Janes._

_“Gross,” Sharon said, staring into the wardrobe._

_The empty room didn’t reply. She would rather have been in combat pants and boots and vest, taking out private security with a taser and two fists._

_She would rather have been in Norway—_

_Fuck that._

_Sharon took four deep breaths, tried on her prettiest smile, and pulled a set of scrubs from the cupboard._

_Chapstick on her ruined lip. Gloss on the wound Natasha left._

∆

_They caught up with her ten minutes into the drive. Natasha swore, and the taxi driver looked over his shoulder: he saw the crowd of mismatched cars surrounding his bumper, and coughed in surprise._

_“Here,” Natasha growled, and she threw four bills into his face, frantically rolling down the window, gun in hand._

_“Ma’am—“ he protested, and Natasha slid through the window, head in the wind, her hair snapping around her face. She saw the guy in the blue tracksuit in the passenger seat of a crusty old Ford, leading the charge._

_She aimed, shot, and he slumped in his seat, a bloody hole in his forehead. The taxi swerved at the sound of the shot._

_Natasha gripped the top of the window._

_“Keep driving!” she yelled at the driver, and he hunched over his wheel, terrified._

_“Okay!” he cried._

_There was a crash, shatter of glass, and Natasha ducked as a hail of bullets slammed into the wall of the car, biting into the ground, the door._

_Someone had a goddamn machine gun. Natasha fired back, teeth gritted against the windburn, shots to the driver, the tires, the engine, and two cars lost control and swerved into each other, crunching together with a blow of flame. The road spun away beneath Natasha’s precarious seat._

_“Faster!” Natasha hollered to the taxi driver. His eyes were glued to the windscreen, and he was muttering, praying, sweating. He swerved around a truck and Natasha almost lost her grip. The window was cutting into her thigh, there was glass embedded in her shoulder. She fired back again, took out a left wing of two cars, but the crusty Ford was getting closer and closer, the dead tracksuit guy lolling around sickeningly in his seat._

_Sharon—_

_Focus, Romanoff._

_The Ford crept up, the engine screaming, and the front jammed against the taxi bumper, shaking the car. Natasha slipped, grabbed at the roof, holding herself there with her nails and her will, and then another round of bullets slammed into the car roof and she let go on instinct._

_“Brake!” she roared. The taxi driver slammed on the brakes and the car slowed, tires burning against the road, pushed on by the Ford, and Natasha fell to the road._

_It ran beneath her, slashed at the bare skin on her legs as she _bounced_ , the air rushing out of her, and she rolled to the side, off the verge and into the sidewalk. She came to a stop, groaning, gasping, aching, and the car chase streamed off without her, brakes squealing, piling up the traffic._

_Natasha staggered dizzily to her feet, grabbing at the wall beside her. Blood on her hand, a smudged imprint on the grey wall. She’d lost her gun, and her bag._

_A woman with a pram was frozen on the sidewalk, staring at her. Two kids on scooters on Natasha’s other side gaped._

_“Scuse me,” Natasha gasped, and she ducked behind them, and ran._

_Her second DC safe apartment was small and there was water damage on the walls. It was owned by an old Russian woman called Ekaterina who owed Natasha her life._

_Natasha pulled glass out of her shoulder and dropped it into the sink, thinking of Sharon, alone at the airport. A bottle of vodka stood on the windowsill. Outside, the sky was darkening. Blood streamed over her elbow and down the plug hole. She took a swig of the vodka and gritted her teeth._

_Her phone had been in her bag. _Idiot_. It was fine. They wouldn’t be able to get into it: she didn’t know who they were, but they looked like a gang and gangsters weren’t too clever sometimes._

_Natasha assembled a gun with trebling fingers, pulled it apart, click, click, rattle. Put it together again. Dead Tracksuit Guy glared up at her from a mugshot on her computer._

_She wanted to go to bed. She was tired, after Norway, the Helicarrier, the flight. She was tired and she **wanted** —_

_—to see Sharon._

_“Fuck,” Natasha growled to herself. These were liabilities. Exhaustion. Desires. Worry._

_She should have left Sharon to bleed out in that laboratory in the middle of Fuck-Nowhere, Norway._

_Should have struggled through the snow and her conscience, back to the cabin. She could have handled telling old, ill Peggy Carter that her only living relative was dead because of Natasha, glassy-eyed and choking on her own blood, pale and dull._

_Her fingers slipped on the gun and it fell apart on the table. It was like there was still blood slicking her palms, from the glass wounds. Natasha dropped the pieces and tossed back the rest of the vodka, pretended it didn’t make her gasp and her eyes burn._

_She had work to do._

_She ignored the shake in her hands._

∆

Natasha digs her phone from under her ass, and the screen lights up for her. There’s a message, and her heart skips a beat—

**Today**

Steve: **where did you go?** 23:10

Natasha allows herself a breath of disappointment. Then the guilt crowds in, and she has to bury her head in the crook of Clint's elbow for a second so she can _breathe_.

 **sorry** 23:10

 **long day** 23:10

 **some of us need sleep** 23:11

Steve: **you told me two days ago that spies never sleep** 23:11

 **shut up** 23:12

 **don't be a little bitch** 23:12

Steve: **you ditched me. I'm allowed to be a little bitch** 23:13

 **well it's habit for you now isn't it** 23:14

He doesn't reply for another ten minutes.

Steve: **:(** 23:24

Natasha spends a good thirty seconds snorting into Clint's chest, and he looks down curiously. Captain America uses _emoticons._

 **sorry** 23:25

Steve: **I thought you hit it off with a couple of the ladies** 23:26

Natasha takes a second to think about that sentence. 

Steve: **Lucy seemed to like you quite a lot ;)** 23:26

"Jesus Christ," Natasha snorts. It's so funny it _hurts._

Steve: **you are gay right** 23:27

Steve: **I didn't mean to make assumptions** 23:27

Steve: **sorry** 23:27

She decides to put him out of his misery.

 **something like that** 23:28

Steve, contrary to popular belief, is extraordinarily observant. But it probably wasn't hard to see Natasha blatantly flirting with Lucy.

She starts to wonder if Sharon saw them, and cuts that train of thought off before it reaches Pain Station.

She tucks her phone away, feeling marginally less awful.

She'll call Sharon tomorrow, she resolves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam/Steve next chapter. Also Peggy.
> 
> Comment and kudos for your favourite love-starved author?


	2. Peggy Carter aka Wingwoman Of The Century

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don’t do this to me Nick— Bucky— Riley—
> 
> —were we given a choice?
> 
> Could we have done something?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> youse know what you're in for by now

_She took care of the Tracksuit Mafia, easily._

_Well._

_Clint took care of them. Kate helped. Natasha shot their leader in the thigh when he giggled at her about reading her texts._

_Then Fury had them all arrested and sent Natasha to the Triskelion and there was Captain America and Hill was shoving a massive packet of paperwork at her--_

_\--and Natasha could think only of Sharon, alone in the airport._

_She went to Sharon's apartment. Locked._

_She broke in to Sharon's apartment. Tidy, dusty. Unlived in for a week._

_Her phone was stuffed into the bottom drawer of the bedside table, and everything smelt like stale air._

_Natasha sat on the bed._

_Undercover mission, maybe, most probably. The apartment felt empty and cold, and Natasha's shoulder was aching. She checked her phone._

_Carter: **where are you?** 16:30_

∆

Natasha doesn't try and contact her. Pissed as she is, Sharon starts to wonder if she will, and before she knows what's happening, it's turned to hope.

She goes to visit Peggy instead of wallowing.

"Troubles?" Peggy asks, as Sharon's gaze drifts towards the window for the eighth time in her visit.

"Sorry," Sharon says, drawing on a smile. Peggy raises a grey eyebrow, and Sharon tries for a slight shrug. "Sort of."

"Boys?" Peggy asks. Sharon's smile feels a little more real. "Girls?" Peggy starts to grin. "Oh, come on. You're giving me nothing. Work? Home?"

"Peg-"

"You came here to talk, didn't you?" Peggy says primly, settling her hands on her lap. She leans forwards conspiratorially, a gleam in her eye. "It's your mother, isn't it? You can tell me." Sharon snorts.

"It's not my mom, but thank you."

"Girls," Peggy guesses again. She squints at Sharon, and Sharon tries not to laugh. Peggy sits back, nodding. "Girls.

"Peggy!" Sharon protests.

"Tell me your troubles," Peggy insists, and there's a shit-eating grin on her face. Sharon stares her down, as stern as she can. Peggy smirks back.

Sharon breaks before long with a laugh.

"Fine." She picks at the hem of her dress. She goes red for a second, so unsure of how to start, _where_ to start. She can't exactly say she's fallen for the greatest con artist and assassin the world has probably ever known.

Well. That's not entirely true, anyway.

She's fallen for _Natasha_.

"I don't know," she manages, after a long second. Peggy is staring out the window. "We-- something happened with us. Then, I don't know, something else got in the way. She didn't tell me." The words are coming out in chunks, like a broken record. Sharon winds a thread from her dress around her finger, squeezing tighter until her fingernail goes white.

"Could she have told you?" Peggy asks. Sharon looks at her. "Did it put you in danger?"

"Ye of little faith in my dating type," Sharon jokes weakly. She sighs. "Maybe. Like I said, I don't know."

"You remember me telling you about Angie," Peggy says gently. Sharon looks at her, but there's this faraway look in her eye: distant joy, pale regret. Sharon tugs on the thread of her dress.

"Yeah," she replies, soft.

"I put her in danger once," Peggy says. She chuckles, watery, a little bitter. "More than once. She didn't get angry about it until I couldn't tell her -- anything. Then she would get mad, spitting mad sometimes. Not for herself, though. She wasn't afraid." She sighs, and it rattles unhealthily in her chest. "She would get so angry, wonderfully, righteously angry, but at the end she'd always say: _you stop doing this, darling, or we'll lose each other one of these days_." Peggy smiles at the sunlight dappling the floor. "And we did."

"I'm sorry, Peg," Sharon says, and she reaches for Peggy's hand. Her skin is like paper under Sharon's palm, veins green and thin. Peggy squeezes her hand, and her grip is strong. She looks fiercely at Sharon now, eyes narrow with something stuck.

"So am I," she whispers. "So am I, darling."

∆

Steve hangs around in the lobby for too long.

He swipes through his phone, hovering over Natasha's number.

 _Don't be a wet sock, Rogers_.

It takes him half an hour to gather his courage and go to the front desk.

"I'm here to see Peggy Carter," he says, and the words sound detached on his tongue. Like someone else is speaking behind him, moving his jaw up and down with their fingers.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets to stop them fidgeting. The receptionist smiles, and points him to the stairwell.

It's easier than he had thought it would be.

He stands in the doorway, feet glued to the floor for a second. Peggy stares at him.

She's old.

She's grey.

There's sunlight blanketing her bed.

"Steve?" she says, and her voice breaks.

"Peggy," he says, and his voice breaks, too.

∆

She told herself she'd call Sharon. She told Clint she'd call Sharon. She hasn't called Sharon.

She considered it, staring at her phone as it vibrated itself off the bedstand with a violent alarm.

But then the mission brief had come through and Hill had her extracted from outside a cafe ten minutes after she'd woken up.

Natasha turns the page of her book.

It's recon. Easy. Not easy enough for her to be distracted, though.

So everything gets a little harder when she has to be casing the joint and keeping her focus on someone and fighting to keep Sharon Carter's blackwood eyes out of her imagination.

It would be funny if it wasn't so damn painful.

∆

She married. He's surprised, but not in a bad way.

"You always had me down as a spinster, did you?" Peggy teases.

"No," Steve replies. He smiles. "Maybe." Peggy snorts and links her fingers together.

"What about you?" she asks.

"Me?"

"Yes," Peggy says gently. "I doubt dating is very high on your to-do list, but..."

"A dame?" Steve says, grinning. "Not for me. I don't think so."

"What about a gentleman?" Peggy asks, oh so careful. Steve blinks at her badly sewn, mismatched quilt. She told him her niece made it for her years ago. It's ugly. She seems to love it.

A gentleman. A guy, to date. It's not like he hasn't--

\--come to terms with it. He just doesn't...

"Oh, I don't know," he goes for, and Peggy smiles.

...understand. Really. He doesn't _know_ , he'll say.

"Did I ever tell you about Angie?" she asks, brightening, and Steve's heart skips a beat.

"No," he says, and it comes out strangled. She's queer? He can feel himself flushing, forcing it down. "I--" Peggy looks at her quilt to give him some space. What does he say? He wants to ask, he wants to know all the things--

He takes a breath.

"Why don't you tell me about her?" he asks, and Peggy looks back at him with that smile again.

∆

Sam Wilson is good natured. He's got a particular kind of smile, and a sense of humour, but it's none of those things that makes Steve intrigued.

"It's your bed, right?"

"What's that?" He wouldn't say he's instantly on guard. He just doesn't want to go there.

"Your bed. It's too soft. When I was over there I sleep on the ground, use rocks for pillows." He shrugs, wiping sweat off one wrist. "Like a caveman."

 _That's right_ , Steve thinks.

"Now I'm home, lying in my bed, and it's like..."

"Like sleeping on a marshmallow," Steve says. His throat closes up; Sam either doesn't notice, or won't make a deal out of this. Steve feels respect, warmth, desperate joy, blooming somewhere, maybe the backs of his knees, holding him up so his legs won't give out.

"Feels like I'm gonna sink right to the floor." Sam's smile gets softer and wider. There's a gap between his front teeth. "How long?" Steve asks.

"Two tours," Sam replies. He tugs at his collar. He looks over at the road. "You must miss the good old days, huh?"

 _Fuck, no_ , Steve thinks. Instead, he shrugs.

"Ah, it's not so bad. Food's a lot better, we used to boil everything. No Polio's good...internet, so helpful--" Sam snorts, and Steve stands a little straighter-- "been reading that a lot, trying to catch up." Sam holds out a hand.

"Marvin Gaye," he says, very seriously. "1972, Trouble man Soundtrack." He spreads his fingers. "Everything you missed, jammed into one album." Steve nods, digging his notebook out of his back pocket.

"I'll put it on the list," he says. His hand is a little shaky, maybe with adrenaline. Maybe nerves. The cars, too many of them. Sure.

When he looks back up, Sam's eyes are gold in the sunlight.

Steve suddenly feels like -- all the time recently it's been: what have you done? You left and you never came back. You killed and you cried but no one knows.

And Sam, maybe in just a few words -- now it's: we didn't have a choice, did we? Sam knows. Sam understands.

∆

"We've got a plane waiting back at HQ," Hill says over comms, as Natasha stalks back to the recon van.

"Another mission?"

"You'll want to pick up your tac suit. Briefing en route."

"Yes ma'am," Natasha says dryly.

"Get rid of the tone, Romanoff," Hill replies, ever weary. "Hill out."

∆

"You do anything fun Saturday night?" Natasha asks conversationally. She knows he went somewhere. She doesn't know _where_.

"Well, all the guys from my barbershop quartet are dead, so no," he replies, and Natasha snorts.

"You know, if you asked Kristen out from Statistics, she'd probably say yes," Natasha says, probing. Steve doesn't even flinch. The ramp starts to open.

"That's why I don't ask," he says, loudly, over the noise of the plane. He fixes his helmet on. Natasha rolls her eyes.

"Too shy, or too scared?"

"Too busy!" he yells, and he jumps.

"Likely," Natasha mutters. She struggles carefully into her chute.

"Was he wearing a parachute?" Rollins asks, bug-eyed over Rumlow's shoulder. Natasha makes her way around them to the ramp, the wind screaming into her face, stripping her cheeks raw.

"No," Rumlow chuckles. "No, he wasn't."

"Get used to it, boys," Natasha says, and she jumps, but not before she can catch the dirty look Rollins throws her.

Asshole.

She thinks, as she falls, that it's been twenty four hours since she saw Sharon and made a mess of a mess.

She thinks, when this is done, when the ship is cleared, she'll go home and she'll text Sharon and she'll start to fix this.

The ship looms at her through the screaming dark.

∆

He goes to visit her again.

There's a photo on her bedside table that he didn't notice before, her family. Husband, kids.

Steve smiles. It makes him happy that she made something.

"I always meant so well," Peggy says quietly, when she sees him looking. Steve wonders for a second what that means.

"You should be proud of yourself, Peg," he says, gentle. Outside the window, the world spins on, muffled cars and noise and people. So much noise. She turns her head into the pillow.

"I have lived a life." She looks forlorn, somehow. "My only regret is that you didn't get to live yours."

Steve smiles, grimly. She's not wrong. Even now, when he's adjusted somewhat, everything is brighter, louder, and it hurts him. It's bad enough to have to listen to his own memories, when there's crowds of fresh horrors in the new world.

 _What would you do_? _Given no choice, what have you done_?

He thinks about the Smithsonian. Bucky staring emptily out into the crowd.

What about Natasha? Was she given the choice? Steve tucks his fingers into his sleeves.

Fury and his secrets. They've got to be drenched in blood.

Sometimes he feels like shrinking all the way down again.

"What is it?" Peggy asks. Steve swallows.

"For as long as I can remember," he starts, stops. Breathe. "I just wanted to do what was right." It's not so simple as that, though. "I guess I'm just not so sure what that is anymore. I thought I could throw myself back in, take orders, serve, but..." _It becomes something worse each time._ "...it's just not the same." He smiles, and Peggy laughs weakly.

"Always so dramatic," she says. Steve allows the smile to grow. "You saved the world," she whispers. A little shrug. "We rather...mucked it up." Steve shakes his head. That can't be right. She's built something incredible. What has he done? Punched a few pirates, so far.

"You didn't," he says. "Knowing you founded S.H.I.E.L.D is half the reason I stayed."

All the reason. It was the only reason. Even in future, Peggy continues to change his life. Where would he have gone? What would he have done?

∆

**Today**

**can we talk?** 10:30

Natasha stares and stares at the little blue bubble. Her lungs feel shallow. She gropes around blindly in her cupboard for the last bottle of whiskey.

This can't be healthy.

She has a feeling she doesn't care.

Unknown Number : **wrong number** 10:45

 **it's Natasha** 10:45

She knows that Sharon knows it's her. Natasha takes a long swig of whiskey to stop herself chewing on her thumbnail. The whiskey burns, and she coughs, tears springing up.

The typing bubble comes up, and Natasha dashes her eyes dry.

Unknown Number: **I'm undercover** 10:46

 **ten minutes** 10:46

Unknown Number: **I thought it wasn't about me** 10:47

Natasha grits her teeth, swigs the whiskey again, splutters again, and when she looks down, Sharon's offline.

∆

The world goes to hell in barely eight hours.

She hears the gunshots and drops the laundry basket, sprints back up the stairs. Three at a time, edges flashing under her feet.

The door gives on the second kick, and then her heel makes contact with the lock on the third kick and it flies inwards with a _crash._ Sharon surges in, blood thrumming, gun up.

"Captain Rogers?" she calls.

He peers around the edge of the bookcase, half of his face covered in dust. Blue eyes wide.

"Kate?"

"I'm Agent Thirteen, S.H.I.E.L.D special services," she explains, sweeping the apartment. Hole in the wall in the adjoining room. "I've been assigned to protect you."

"On whose order?" Rogers demands. Sharon rounds the bookcase, and her blood runs cold. Fury's down.

"His," she says. She drops to her knees, digs her thumb into his jaw for a pulse, scrabbling for her radio. Calm, Carter. No pulse. She wipes her bloodied hand, God there's a lot of blood. "Foxtrot is down, he's unresponsive," she relays down the radio, and her mind is running on autopilot. "I need EMTs."

" _Do we have a twenty on the shooter_?" barks HQ.

"Tell them I'm in pursuit," Rogers says. Sharon looks up, and she's alone with Fury's limp body. Rogers is gone. She clutches her gun tighter.

"I have Captain America in pursuit of the shooter, over," she snaps into the radio.

" _Copy. Sit tight, Agent Thirteen. Keep him alive. Out._ "

∆

**Today**

Unknown Number: **Foxtrot is down. Bethesda.** **ER** 00:49

She's in her car in ten seconds. 

There are police lights outside the hospital. Natasha slews into a parking spot with a screech, and leaps from the car.

They try to stop her in the hallway, Rumlow, in tac gear, grabs her arm with a thick gloved hand.

Natasha hits him, elbow into his nose and he falls back. Her head is rushing, all the noise is white and muffled, and she can't hear Rollins yelling.

She bursts into the side room; Steve, massive form silhouetted against the bright clean white of the window, and Fury, lying stripped and still on the operating table.

Her jaw clenches, crushingly hard. She could choke.

Her face is too hot. The room shrinks like some kind of funfair trap, and all she can do is grip the sill and stare.

“Tell me about the shooter,” she grinds out, because someone needs to talk.

“He was fast,” Steve says. “Strong.” He ducks his head, there’s something in his fist. “Had a metal arm.”

It’s like a stab to the eye. All at once, the muscles in her back tighten, tighten. She can’t breathe, that shallow feeling in her lungs again, because it’s _him_.

It’s stupid but— they’ve found her. Are they coming for her? Is this revenge?

Pick off the leaders, one by one. It can’t be them. 

The paint on the sill flakes under her fingers, white-knuckled. There’s something acidic climbing her throat.

Hill steps up beside her, laying her phone flat on the sill. Natasha doesn't look over, but Hill is stiff and strained, throat working angrily.

“Ballistics,” Natasha chokes. Hill’s voice warbles in her ear, distorted.

“...completely untraceable.”

_It’s him._

_Be rational. If they wanted you, they’d have you._

"Soviet made," Natasha says, before she can stop herself. Hill looks over, her forehead creasing. Shrewd. Natasha rearranges her face.

“Yeah.”

Inside the operating room, they’re wheeling a defibrillator over, charging—

“Don’t do this to me, Nick,” she hisses.

Everything is rolling towards her, all the weight crushing her shoulders, like she’d been holding up a ceiling all this time and didn’t notice the place collapsing around her until it was too late.

∆

Her hands are shaking like crazy, and she can’t look at them, because if she does, they’ll be bright with blood. Someone lays a shock blanket carefully over her knees, and Sharon rips it away.

“Sharon,” Natasha says.

“Leave me alone.”

“You did what you could.” Natasha’s voice is thick and rough, and when Sharon looks up, those poisonous eyes are rimmed red.

“I’m sorry,” she says, all professional-like, because if she breaks, that will be it.

And she can’t look at Natasha without feeling something bitter. Natasha sits down beside her, and her fingers are twisted into one another.

“I’m going to kill them,” Natasha says. Cool. Easy. Sharon shivers. The lights of the ambulances glitter on Natasha’s smudged mascara. Sharon reaches for her, hand on her arm, a sure grip; it’s like a lifeline, and her spine might be stiff, but her heart is breathing easier—

—Natasha yanks her arm away roughly.

“I’m going to kill them,” she repeats, and she’s shaking, angry. She looks over at Sharon, and her face is a mask, white-pale and vengeful. “The fucker who shot him. I’m going to kill them.”

“You have a job to do,” Sharon replies quietly, but she’s not sure she wants to try and stop Natasha, because right now all she can see in this woman is a set of bared fangs.

“I’m done with jobs,” Natasha snaps. “I was here because of Fury.” She levels Sharon with a wolfish stare, and Sharon glares back. “I didn’t ever want to be someone’s machine.”

“I’ve heard you didn’t have a choice.”

“We always have a choice,” Natasha says coldly. She looks away, into the distance, squinting at the brightly lit hospital. “You should stay away from me.” Their thighs touch, and Natasha is warm, radiating angry heat.

“Fuck off,” Sharon spits. “I wanted to fix this, Natasha.”

“Then you’re a fool,” Natasha replies softly, distant gaze, blank expression. Something rises in Sharon, angry and hissing.

“I’m not scared of anything that comes your way,” she snaps back. “You texted me, didn’t you? Didn’t you want something?” Natasha cracks a knuckle. The veins in her wrists are bright against thin skin.

“I did. Doesn’t matter now. I’ll be gone before you know I was here.”

“You’re infuriating,” Sharon growls.

“It’s to protect you,” Natasha snaps back. “Didn’t you make a risk assessment before you asked me to kiss you, Carter?” Sharon clutches at the fabric over her knees, bunching it in her fingers.

“I’m not a damsel in distress,” she says coldly. Natasha looks back at her again, swaying towards her. Her shoulder brushes Sharon’s, and this impulse jumps in Sharon’s throat.

 _Fuck_. Sharon grabs the collar of Natasha’s jacket, surges forward, and kisses her. Hard and angry, rough. Natasha freezes under her, warm for a second, and then Sharon lets her go, pushes herself back from Natasha’s shoulder. Her lips sting. Maybe that’s what Natasha means. Don’t get too close, it’ll hurt.

But damn, that was a long time coming.

Natasha glares at her, trembling with anger still.

“I’m so mad at you,” Sharon growls. “You don’t get to act like you know what’s good for me.” She loosens her fingers, pulling back. Natasha grabs at her wrist, tight grip, and Sharon tugs backwards; there are tears in her eyes and she wants to blink them away.

“Stay back,” Natasha growls. “And you won’t get hurt.” She shoves Sharon’s hand back into her chest, and pushes herself to her feet. One last glance over her shoulder, and she’s dark-eyed and ethereal in the moving light. Like some kind of demon. “Maybe I’ll see you again someday.” She walks away, and Sharon doesn’t watch her go.

∆

 _You’ve known this man for barely two weeks,_ Sam thinks desperately, as he rests his chin on the bed rail. _Don’t think this is something._

But it feels different. He remembers watching Riley fall, such a long time ago, and he remembers diving with a roar, pencil straight, teeth gritted like prison bars.

When Steve fell, it was a wild leap because _that’s a long way down_ and _no_ and _this man should live_. Sam needed him to live because there was so much, he could tell, so many days they had yet to open together.

He’s being stupid. He’s being romantic, and he knows he’ll be crushed when Steve wakes up, because this pretending will be over, and instead of thinking about what could happen if, if, _if_ , instead it’ll be holding Steve’s six with a round of bullets.

He can take it. 

“How is he?” Sam startles into a proper sitting position, blinking. Romanoff is leaning on the doorway, and she looks tired, world-weary.

“Going steady,” Sam replies. “Don’t you have the hearing in an hour?”

“I can make it,” Romanoff says dryly. “Good to see you’re still alive.”

“Anyone else on your call list?” Sam teases. Romanoff’s gaze flickers from Steve to the wall.

“Just you two idiots,” she replies. Sam doesn’t push it. She runs her thumb over her knuckles. “I heard people heal faster when you play music,” she says. Sam raises his eyebrows at her. She shrugs. “Also, it’s romantic.” Sam snorts so hard his face aches.

“I thought you agents were meant to be good at reading people,” he says, and he’s telling himself _cool it, Wilson_.

“I thought you psychiatrists were meant to be good at emotions,” Romanoff counters, with a quirk of an eye.

“Not a psychiatrist,” Sam says, grinning.

“Not an agent,” Romanoff replies, small smile. She moves into the doorway, looking to leave. “Good luck.”

“You too,” he says. “See you sometime.”

“I'll always be around to save your ass,” she says. She winks, and she leaves.

“I resent that!” Sam calls after her. He can hear her shoes clicking on the corridor floor, and she laughs, distantly. After a few seconds, Sam digs his phone from his pocket. Marvin Gaye isn’t exactly romantic.

It’ll do, though.

∆

Bucky stares forlornly up from the black and white photograph. Natasha’s still watching. Sam is staring respectfully at Fury’s grave. Steve shuts the file with a whisper of paper, hiding that ghost of a face under the cover.

“Will you do me a favour?” Natasha is saying. Steve zones back in. If he had to guess, he’d say she looks somewhat pained. “Call that nurse?” Steve smiles. They both know he won’t.

“She’s not a nurse.”

“And you’re not a S.H.I.E.L.D agent,” Natasha reminds him. Steve squints at her. It’s too bright a day for graves and ghosts. Maybe she’s telling him that’s he’s got an ally in Agent Thirteen. Maybe she’s just teasing him for the fun of it.

She kisses him, and it doesn’t really feel like goodbye.

“Careful, Steve,” she says, low with warning, and she nods dubiously at the file in his hands. “You might not want to pull on that thread.” She leaves, and he watches her go, knowing that in a few hours, she will have vanished completely. He feels a loss, maybe a pit in his stomach.

“What now?” Sam asks, over his shoulder. He’s staring hard at the file. Steve turns, and looks him up and down: good, solid, loyal Sam with that gap-toothed smile.

“Now,” Steve says, “we go to work.”

_What can you do? Given no choice at all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment and kudos and I will love you forever
> 
> Sorry if you’re waiting for the ‘we don’t need a license’ update, it’s...in the works


End file.
